The Rebound Effect: Again!
by Swordchucks
Summary: Ripped out of his own time, an older, more powerful Keitaro has a chance to alter his past. Or does he?
1. Tsunami

The Rebound Effect: Again!  
Chapter1: Tsunami

Disclaimer: Characters and setting are the property Ken Akamatsu and others.

Author's notes at the end of the chapter.

* * *

The icy expanse of space slid silently past the hull of the military frigate, though the majority of her passengers could care less about the goings on outside the vessel. The ship's crew was comprised of hardened spacers and generally had more important things to do than watch the vacuum go past. Those passengers that were not veteran spacefarers had already grown bored with looking out the chilled portholes at the slowly changing expanse of nothingness. Even at the speeds which the ship traveled, it took days for even the closest stellar body to shift to any degree detectable with the naked eye.

The passengers were a mixed lot, the majority of them being soldiers moving from post to post while the rest were a cross section of the social strata. Closer to Sol, civilians would likely have been aboard a passenger liner or a transport of some kind, but this wasn't close to Sol, not by a long shot. Out here in the depths of space, anyone who didn't own their own ship took a slip where they could find it. The Imperial Navy wasn't above taking on passengers for a nominal fee and acceptance of the fact that there was a very real chance of getting fired upon before reaching their destination, so many folk found themselves bunking down between ration crates at one point or another. Of course, the dangers on a military frigate were no worse than faced on more private vessels, they were simply different.

One of those passengers had taken up a position in a darkened corner of what served as the passengers' meal hall. Passengers and crew did not officially mix, though they came closer to doing so inside the confines of the meal hall than any other area. Here, a crude form of alcohol was sold along with the slightly substandard rations which were the best passengers generally could hope for. Alcohol, however, served to equalize the different social tiers within the ship, and virtually everyone aboard could be seen in the meal hall eventually. Given the large load of personnel and passengers, that made the meal hall a busy place.

The figure in the corner took a long, slow sip of his beverage, some of the aforementioned alcohol, and sighed. Had he been in better light, his purely Asian features would have been obvious as well as his slight build, far smaller than any of the soldiers and almost all of the passengers, as well. One of his hands rested innocently against his hip where a worn pattern in the material of his belt showed that a holster of some type normally rested. Passengers were not, of course, allowed to carry weapons aboard ship. Other blank spaces on his belt indicated more items which had either been relinquished to the soldiery or hidden so as not to attract the avarice of other passengers or even crew members. It was not unknown for a traveler to find himself beaten and robbed or worse as part of the passage from star to star.

Sighing again and taking another drink, the passenger settled back into the shadows, his eyes slowly but methodically watching the other people in the meal hall. When one of those figures appeared before him, all his vigilance served to do, however, was make the appearance all the more surprising. In a maneuver half born of reflex and half of clumsiness, he found himself falling backwards from the chair. His flailing arms managed to maintain his balance just long enough for the other figure to seize the front of his tunic and pull him forward again, forcing the chair's legs to the floor.

"You should be more careful," the newcomer said, her lilting voice pronouncing the garbled Indo-Chinese of Imperial Basic in a clearly feminine manner, though the baggy dark clothing and tied back hair could have hid either gender in the dim light. "I do not believe you have changed at all since last we saw each other."

The original lurker laughed nervously. "I..." he started, but seemed to give up on whatever he was thinking about saying. "I've been looking for you for quite a while. I knew you were in the sector... but I had only hoped you would be aboard this ship." He took another drink of the caustic liquor, seeming to take some courage from the fluid. "I wish you would come back with me. Things are growing more dangerous in the galaxy, especially for our kind. The children..." he trailed off as he realized that the female was staring at him intently. "What?"

"You did not chase me out to the edges of known space just because a few witch hunters have gained in power," she said very matter-of-factly. Her eyes scanned his face, seeming not to notice the relative darkness of their corner. "You have changed so much since we first met. Am I so changed as well?" It was the woman's turn to sigh. "How many years has it been since that day? I no longer count..."

"Six hundred, seventy four years and six months, give or take a few months. Calendars are not so reliable in space, particularly with recent... events." He shrugged. Keeping track of the years had apparently been one of his few vices and the apparent lapses were a bit of an embarrassment. "Fifteen years since your last departure from home," he added levelly, though it was clear from the tone of his voice that the passage of time had cost him an emotional price.

"So long... I..." she sighed, the calm confidence of her voice wavering a little. Her eyes no longer met his face, though she did address his accusation in her own way. "How are the children?"

"Tamago is married now, though I thought he would end up a spinster. He is almost fifty. And our first great-great grandchild should be turning twelve any day now." The oddity of the situation made him laugh, though a slight tinge of nervousness still crept into his voice.

"Are they... pure?" she asked, the odd way in which she twisted the word 'pure' made it seem more an epithet than an adjective.

"As far as I've been able to tell, yes," he said, his own lips turning in distaste. "They will be safe from the Inquisitors, if they come. We have not passed on our legacy, it seems, though I fear that one day the genes may reappear and they will face danger."

"There are so few of us left now. We might be the last..." Her voice sounded melancholy, almost wistful at the prospect. "If only we could rest as well. Sometimes, I think that death has left me waiting for too long."

The woman may have been smiling a grim smile in the darkness, though in the dim light there was little the man could make out. He pressed on, "Look, I know how you feel about everything. We shouldn't be here. It should be one of them. They shouldn't be dead or we should be or something else entirely. We didn't know. We couldn't have known," his voice wavered, indicating that this was a topic that he was struggling with as well.

"If only I had been... stronger," she said, softly and almost timidly, "I should have known."

"That's not true. You couldn't have known what was going to happen..." he took a deep breath. "They are avenged. There is nothing more we can do. Please, just... come home with me. Let's forget about them for a little while." The suggestion hung heavily in the air between them. "I don't mean forever, it's just that... I love you. Nothing is going to bring them back, but we can be together for a while, if nothing else."

The female turned from him as though to hide her face. "I... love you, as well, but I don't think that I can-"

Suddenly, the ship lurched violently and the lights went out for an instant as the gravity failed. Warning klaxons sounded as the pair were thrown violently from their seats and rebounded off of a bulkhead. They clung together as they impacted and rotated. Everywhere around them, people were screaming and drifting out of control in zero-g. Soldiers scrambled to their stations in the null gravity, and passengers did their best to avoid floating freely. The ship shuddered violently again and the floating pair slammed hard into what had been the floor, with the female on the bottom.

"I... love you..." the male figure gasped out as the taste of his own blood welled up in his mouth. The female form did not stir.

And then a third violent shiver struck the ship and everything went black.

* * *

Urashima Keitaro gripped the bus transfer in one hand and gulped. He hadn't seen his grandmother in years, but with his parents kicking him out of the house, she was his only hope. Sighing deeply, his mind raced over what had gone wrong at the last entrance exam for Toudai but he cut it short. "No, that was last year. This year I will make it in for certain."

During his walk through the last few blocks, to the long and winding staircase of the inn, he ran over what he was going to say to his grandmother a few times. The promise he had made 15 years ago still gave him strength, but it was all he could do to keep desperation out of his thoughts. This was truly his last chance of attending Toudai and avoiding his "destiny" as the successor to the family bakery. With the way the economy had been flagging, he did not think that a part time job would be able to support him well enough for him to study properly. Second year ronin or not, this time he would succeed.

At the top of the steps, the sprawling complex of the Hinata Inn was revealed. The building looked to be in failing repair, though not abandoned which caused Keitaro's hope to swell slightly. A lack of visitors would mean extra rooms, which might be all he needed to convince his grandmother to let him stay. However, as he entered he was surprised to find the building empty. Several pairs of slippers were laid out on the floor, and the place looked clean enough, though no one appeared to be home.

The rough bus trip started to take its toll and Keitaro ventured into the room marked "landlord" assuming it was his aunt's. After a little rest and a brief pity party for his plight, the knotted muscles in his back got the better of him.

"Isn't there a hot springs here?" he asked the room in general. No one answered, of course, but his memory indicated that there was, indeed. He stretched and rose to go find it. There was nothing better for an aching back, after all.

* * *

"Is he dead?" a soft, almost childish voice asked, almost sounding frightened.

Struggling with the fuzziness in his skull, he sat up, his hand going to his throbbing temples. "Gajaka vosh," he spat, a choice curse he'd picked up on a mining colony some time back that translated to an anatomical impossibility for most sentient creatures. "What happened... the ship..."

"What is he saying?" a voice asked and the sound of several feet backing away could be heard.

"What the hell happened? Were we attacked? Was there a woman found as well?" He asked, looking up for the first time and realizing that the bright lights overhead were not those of a medical bay, or even the haphazard lighting of a pirate vessel. Instead, the bright light was a pure golden sunlight streaming through an open window. This fact sank in at approximately the same time as the realization that the voices had been speaking Japanese, a language three hundred years dead.

The final shock was seeing them. The girls he had lost that fateful day six hundred years ago, all standing around him and staring.

"Gajaka vosh," he muttered again as the darkness came surging back and he fainted, falling backwards.

* * *

Author's notes:

So, what is this, exactly? It's a kind of amalgamation of a fic idea I had about 6 years ago and Love Hina. It's not necessary to read the original fic (it was Sailor moon based) in order to understand what's going on here. To a large extent, the science is just a setup for the real story, so don't worry about it making sense (it makes BS sense unless you really think about it, then it's obviously BS).

In any case, if you read this, drop me a line. I'm interested in getting feedback so that I can decide how to continue this one. Positive or negative feedback is welcome, it all helps to make a better story. Currently, I'm considering this version of the fic a working draft. Serious changes might or might not happen.


	2. Awakening

The Rebound Effect: Again!  
Chapter 2: Awakening

Disclaimer: Characters and setting copyright Ken Akamatsu. Spoilers, those that might appear, would be from the end of the manga series (vol 14).

Again, thoughts are in the style /thought/ much like "spoken" works.

* * *

The world swirled softly around Urashima Keitaro and memories best kept buried bubbled across his consciousness. Always, the same nightmare rushed in on his sleep. The seaside inn that they had gone to that fateful night to celebrate after Seta and Keitaro's big find slid across before him. Followed by the creatures that had come... after. And, as always, that sickly sweet taste welled up in his mouth and made him want to vomit. The dreams had grown more vivid over time and more horrific. During his wakeful time, he knew that many of the things the dreams showed him had not happened, but they were a consistently growing cancer in his nocturnal reverie.

The specters of memory persisted even as he fought to free himself from the visions, and Keitaro didn't know whether to run, fight, or collapse. Guilt and anger and fear warred within him, even after having the same dream every night for six hundred years. Guilt at having lived through that night when so many others did not was strong, but not as strong as the guilt at having done... what had to be done after. He would have been dead within days after it was all over if it hadn't been for the actions of his partners. The same thought drove a wedge into the dream as it always did, and he used the memory to draw himself free of the worst of the dreamscape.

Sour emotions sheeted from his mind as so much rainwater across glass as he pulled himself free from the dream and into a state somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. There was light on the other side of his closed eyes, though the lethargy that had settled about him made opening them a rough prospect at best. In this half state between sleep and wakefulness, between life and death, he found himself oddly at ease. The waking world held little for him and the sleeping world was only torment, but here, in the "between", he found some solace. It would not last for long as voices drifted through the void in which he floated, each of them sinking one of a small hook of consciousness into his being and pulling him slowly toward the surface.

"What was he... bath? ... You ... nephew?" Words slipped through his mind like tiny fish in a stream, swirling and darting in a cloud of color and movement. As he rose higher and higher, fish become larger and fewer for some reason, and their colors more complex.

Another voice cut across, stronger and older, accompanied by a faint whiff of cigarette smoke. "He... nothing wrong... should be..."

And then, as though his mind were a soap bubble floating up from some great depth, he found himself thrust into another realm of awareness, though whether he had just awoken or slipped back into the dreams he could not be sure. Sometimes the dreams started like this, though the pain filling his skull was definitely something new. The pain forced a groan from his lips before he could still them, and his hand involuntarily drifted to his face. "Where am I..." he asked in slurred Basic.

"I thought you said he was your nephew, Haruka. Why's he babbling in Chinese?" His eyes flew open at the voice which was speaking in rich, perfect Japanese. His eyes found the speaker quickly, a young girl still in her teens, and he could only stare at her dumbfounded, though her name was right at the front of his mind. The whole situation was mind-boggling and quite likely a dream, but he hadn't survived over six hundred years by being slow on the uptake. Not after that night, anyway.

"I am sorry, Mit... ma'am. I have been abroad for a little while," he said with a wavering voice. He laughed nervously though the sound of his own voice painted the inside of his mind with a forest of needles and jagged knives. In his dreams, they were always older, as he had seen them before their deaths. He stopped laughing and the lancing pain in his head receded a bit and it was almost possible to think.

"Wierdo," one of the girls growled. With his head clearing, Keitaro didn't have to look to know that the voice belonged to none other than Narusegawa Naru. Her voice was etched forever on his soul, though it was more spiteful than he remembered. Regardless of what she said, he found himself reluctant to look in her direction. In his nightmares, his subconscious self often saved the worst of its nastiness to heap out upon her, and looking at her too soon might cause his subconscious to begin the slow spiral of torment all the faster.

"You should be more careful where you take a bath," said another of the assembled women, though this time it was his aunt who spoke. She was younger than he remembered her, though not as young as the others looked. He hadn't known her when she was really young, of course.

"Sorry," he mumbled as he managed to take in his surroundings. Someone had laid him out on a soft surface which appeared to be the couch in the lobby of the Hinatasou. All around him the landscape of his memories was perfectly preserved, though he hadn't been inside the Hinatasou, or what was left of it, in many centuries. Seated and standing around him were the girls he remembered from the happy days of his youth, full of vibrant life. Even glancing at Naru did not bring on the normal pangs of the nightmare world, which brought forth the strong suspicion that this might be something other than a dream.

"So, what's with the sudden visit? Miss your dear aunt?" Haruka chided, apparently doing her best to diffuse the tension in the room. Thoughts swirled through his head. If this weren't a dream then he was going to need to play along for a while. However, how did reality fit in here? He couldn't very well tell them that he'd just gone unconscious aboard an Imperial frigate while traveling the stars. Even if this were a trick of some sort, such an absurdity would serve him no good.

Seeing that he was still groggy, Haruka apparently decided to drive the conversation a little more. "If you're looking for grandma, she's not around. It's getting pretty late, though. This is a girl's dormitory now so you probably can't stay here, but I've got a spare room down at my tea house if you like. You're at Toudai now, right? Are you heading back in the morning?"

"Well, I guess..." he began, but didn't have a chance to finish as the word 'Toudai' seemed to electrify the girls. He had been roped into staying at the Hinatasou for the night and given his grandmother's room before he could get his verbal and mental feet back under himself. It was only when he got a moment alone in his room and saw his things that he remembered that he hadn't gotten into Toudai until he'd been at the Hinatasou for over two years.

He pawed through his things, but not finding anything useful, ducked out of his room via the window before he could do any more damage.

* * *

The cool night air through the trees cleared his mind and made the dream a pleasant one. _/Is this a dream?/_ he wondered to himself. Certainly, he'd never experienced one like it before. Usually, the change from pleasant to horrific did not take so long and was far more predictable than this.

_/No, his time is different,/_ he decided. Maybe it was a different kind of dream, and it was waiting for something to trigger the nightmare, though what that could be was a complete mystery. _/Maybe I'm dead? This could be heaven./ _The thought made him smile slightly. Certainly, he had spent six hundred years dreaming of a world where that night hadn't happened, and this seemed to be it.

It all was so real, like a page ripped from his memories, though even more vivid than he could recall. Even now, he couldn't remember the way the wind would whip across the land around the Hinatasou, but if he opened his eyes and watched it, it felt right and true. /_If this isn't a dream, what is it?/_

His last memories were clear. He had caught a fleeting glimpse out of a porthole and seen the space itself buckling and warping in an impossible wave of energy that rushed toward them. It was bigger than any blast he had ever seen, and would have ripped the frigate into a thousand rusted pieces if it had impacted. Maybe it had, and by some miracle he hadn't been obliterated. Maybe he was floating in vacuum, frozen and cursed by his immortality, waiting for a chance to burn up while reentering some atmosphere somewhere and this was his mind's way of passing the time.

Whatever was going on, he was reliving his childhood. Or, rather, the start of his life. He smiled softly at that thought. When he looked back on his life, he always started with this day and went forward, never backward. Maybe it was a second chance to do everything over again, and do it right.

He laughed to himself. Time travel was impossible, he knew. Science and magic both had show that a change to the past would result in a paradox which would result in the change never having taken place. Thus it was impossible to change anything. He sighed and thought about it for a bit. If this was some method of time travel that actually worked, then why was he the only apparent victim?

Thinking quickly, he knew of at least five immortal beings still active in his time, two of them near and dear to his heart. However, when the girls had all been around him, she hadn't shown a glimmer of confusion or recognition. _/Maybe the accident changed something.../ _He shook his head to clear the thought. Speculation now wouldn't do anyone much good.

Grumbling to himself, he rose, stretching. His body certainly felt different. It was younger, certainly, but also much softer. Soft was an understatement, actually. He felt positively weak. Of course, that shouldn't have come as a surprise. At this point in his life, he hadn't gone through even a iota of the hardship and toil that six hundred years could bring, much less the hardening of training and experience.

He sighed, and felt about mentally. He was as weak as a kitten, and twice as slow in this state, but he could still feel his power there, waiting to be tapped. He drew some of it into himself and blinked in surprise at how little of it there actually was. Even from an early age, he had always been surrounded by a low level magical shield which warded off damage, but the small amount of power he could channel was almost startling. _/This is all that kept me alive living with Naru?/ _he wondered to himself, letting the magic go.

_/Geeze, it's a miracle I ever saw 25,/_ he thought as he summoned up the magic again. Already, he could feel sweat forming across his brow from the effort. _/How the mighty have fallen,/ _he lamented. In his time, he was arguably the most powerful magician still in existence. With the activities of the Inquisition, those with the ability to use magic, or the "taint" as they called it, had grown fewer and fewer. He pulled on the energy and wove it into a simple spell. "Comperio, pactio!" he intoned and he felt the magic swirl around him only to dissipate.

The spell had worked, he was fairly certain, but there was nothing to reveal. He did not have a contract with a Ministra Magi. What, exactly, that meant, he wasn't sure. If this were anything but time travel, he would have expected to feel the pull of at least one if not both contracts, but he'd felt none.

Silently, he resolved to stay out of trouble until he could figure out what was going on.

* * *

Author's notes: Needless to say, Negima is getting mixed in with the rest of the story (my intent from the start or the re-start, at least). This chapter was going to be a little longer, because I know where I want to end the next one, but I've decided to let it be short and go on and get it out there.

Comperio, pactio : Bad Latin on my part, but the words mean something akin to "reveal all, the contract" or the like. It's not conjugated at all. If someone can do better with Latin, please help me out ;)


	3. Reiteration

A/N: Slightly edited version. I'm dropping honorifics for now. I haven't seen a non-translated version of the manga (my primary basis for "canon") and it's been long enough since I've seen the anime that I can't put –sans and –chans in the right places for the girls talking to each other. I can handle Keitaroanyone conversations, but the girls talking to each other is my difficulty (old friends generally don't follow the regular rules). I will stick with using last names in place of first names for more formalized relationships (ie, Motoko to Keitaro). I feel that this course of action is preferable to having it done badly, even though I don't love it this way and it looks a little weird sometimes.

The Rebound Effect: Again!  
Chapter 3: Reiteration

Disclaimer: Characters and setting copyright Ken Akamatsu. Spoilers, those that might appear, would be from the end of the manga series (vol 14). Negima spoilers will be minor in terms of plot. "How magic works" will be at whatever point I've seen to (currently a chapter in the high 50s).

Again, thoughts are in the style /thought/ much like how "spoken" works.

* * *

The fiery orb of Sol had barely touched the horizon as Keitaro made his way from the secluded spot in the grounds surrounding the Hinatasou back to the dormitory itself. His memory of the exact order of events from his youth was hazy, at best, but he could recall his grandmother sending a fax within the first few days to cement his role as the building manager.

It was from here that he had managed to gain entry to Toudai. He'd lied about being in Toudai when first he had come here, as well. _/It's funny how history repeats itself,/_ he mused as he walked down the path. He'd been caught up in the Toudai lie again, though this time he felt that there would be no need for a third year as a ronin if he were to take the exam again.

The course of action that he was going to take occupied his thoughts like an elephant in a Print Club booth and he didn't have any answers. If this was, indeed, time travel, then changing anything could prove disastrous. He had never heard of successful time travel, but even if this were it, he could think of no reason why he would be an ancient mind in a young body. Something just didn't make sense.

A falling leaf drifted across his path and his eyes followed it for a second before his hand leapt out, one finger extended to skewer it. Instead of hitting the leaf, his fingertip brushed the stem and caused it to pinwheel away with the breeze. _/I should have gotten that,/_ he noted to himself in a detached manner. _/I should have at least hit the center, even if I didn't pierce it./_ His body was definitely that of his nineteen year old self.

Though in later life it became apparent that he had always had a lot of potential with both martial arts and magic, when he was nineteen, he'd possessed all of the training and ability of an unripe watermelon. He knew that regaining some semblance of ability wouldn't be difficult, but it would require a lot of repetitive work.

_/Do I have time?/_ he wondered once more. Whatever had caused him to regress in time might snap him back in an instant, or it might leave him to languish forever, as far as he knew. _/Would that be so bad?/_ he asked himself, but had no answers to that question, either. This was no longer the world he was used to; nor was it the world where he had been happy in his youth. To return to that world would require events to unfold as they had the first time.

By the time he had reached the Hinatasou once more, he had reached a conclusion of sorts. He decided that he would not make any blatant attempts to change anything about this time. The girls here might have been the same girls he'd loved and, in most cases, lost, but they didn't know him or care for him as he knew and cared for them. Getting too close to them would only make being here harder. If he got sucked back into his own time, he didn't know if he could handle losing them twice.

No, he had decided. If he was going to change anything, it would have to be done gently. _/She always said that if she were stronger, that day would never have happened... Maybe that is the answer. If I can't directly change anything, then maybe I can change her./_

He nodded to himself, satisfied with that course of action. It wouldn't matter if he destroyed his own future, if it meant saving their lives. The love that had grown after that fateful night meant a lot to him, but looking at the tragedy and the misery the three of them had carried for six hundred years, he couldn't choose that course for them twice. Giving that up seemed a steep price, but holding on to it and letting the horrors occur again seemed an impossible one.

* * *

Again and again, the blade descended. Each arc of the sword was identical to the one before it, and the clarity and truth of the action allowed her mind to feel the flow and the now. Each cycle of the blade was another blow in the battle between the flesh and the spirit; another erosion of the past and present and a reinforcement of the "now". _/The warrior does not think of the future or dwell on the past. With the blade in hand, there is only the "moment". To grasp the moment is to grasp.../_

Her train of thought was interrupted by something that she could not place and she opened her eyes. Seated on the railing, not five meters away, was the Toudai student. She hadn't heard him come up to the roof where she was practicing, but she had been far into her meditative state. "Urashima," she said very curtly. Her opinion on allowing a male to stay in the dormitory was relatively neutral, unlike Naru's, but that did not mean she was any less suspicious of him. The fact that he was now watching her very intently while she practiced was disconcerting.

When she acknowledged his presence, he offered her a polite smile. "'To cut off past and future thoughts, and not to live within the everyday mind. Then the Great Way is right before your eyes,' yes?" he asked her.

"Urashima," she repeated, her voice very calm and even. She managed to keep her dislike for him and the surprise she felt at his quotation from showing. "You are perceptive... Are you a student of the sword as well as of Toudai?"

"A little, I guess. It's one of those things that you just kind of pick up along the way." He stretched and hopped from his perch, apparently oblivious to the hard look she was giving him.

"Would you care to have a little match with these things that you 'just kind of picked up,' then?" she asked as levelly as she could, though her annoyance at his cavalier attitude about swordsmanship bled through.

He offered her a grin. "Sure, just go easy on me, okay?"

She nodded to him and went to fetch a pair of bokken from her room. Within a few moments, she returned and passed one to him. "The way of the sword is a very serious one, Urashima-san. It is a path which requires dedication and does not allow for deviance."

He cocked his head slightly while replying to her. It felt like she was being studied. "Do you enjoy your practice with the sword, Aoyama-san?"

_/So, he turns it around on me,/_ she noted. "Swordsmanship is not to be enjoyed; it is to be followed with dedication and purpose."

He held the wooden sword awkwardly, as though he had never touched one before, and she started to think his demeanor was simply bluster. She offered him a cold smile. Besting men who thought they were better than her was one of her favorite activities. He did a few practice swings in the air and his grip shifted.

"If you cannot find enjoyment in the sword, then why would you follow it?" he asked as he fell into a stance that seemed vaguely familiar to her and showed that he hadn't been lying about knowing at least a little swordsmanship.

She grunted and assumed her own stance. _/Why is he telling me these things? He does not understand the way of the warrior, at all./ _Suddenly, something occurred to her. "Urashima-san, would you care for some padding? I do not wish for you to become injured." _/Much,/ _she added to herself.

He shook his head. "I think I'll be okay. I've got thick skin."

He made no move at her and, after a few seconds, she grew impatient and shifted her leading foot as she prepared to strike. Her bokken came up and around only to be met by the wooden sword Keitaro held. He struck back, but she blocked it with little effort. A few more passes followed, but the result remained the same.

After several seconds of sparring, it became obvious that neither had a clear advantage in skill. They broke apart and Motoko's eyes scanned her opponent, appraising him. She felt flushed, though her breathing did not come quickly. Keitaro, on the other hand, was flushed and breathing harder than he had been. _/He is right about knowing a few things, but he has not trained himself diligently and now he fades. His strength does not match mine,/_ she realized. They clashed again, but this time Keitaro was slower and she sent his bokken rattling across the roof.

"If you were to give yourself over to the path of the sword, Urashima, you might one day make an acceptable warrior," she said, though the fact that he was not currently a warrior was implicit in her compliment.

"You are correct, Aoyama, my body is not properly conditioned to this activity," he said as he bowed in a gesture of submission, though his grin was returning. His breathing slowed to normal, but Motoko's flush did not fade. "I thank you for the chance to cross swords with someone so skillful."

Motoko could not tell whether he was sincere or if she was being mocked. Before she had a chance to pursue it further, the sound of someone clearing their throat broke the moment. Motoko broke eye contact with Keitaro and stood back, feeling vaguely embarrassed, though she didn't quite know why.

"My, my, Motoko, claiming Keitaro for yourself already?" Mitsune asked from the top of the stairs. "A Toudai student is a good catch, but you must be really serious to go easy on him like that."

Motoko felt a blush rising, though she wasn't quite sure why. "It's not like that, Kitsune!" she growled, a little more forcefully than she had intended.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, you could do worse than a Toudai student if you're going to give up the swordswoman thing. I mean, he's not too attractive, but-" Mitsune droned on with an expression half way between a leer and a smile.

"Kitsune!" She exclaimed as she fought down her embarrassment.

"Umm... I'll just be going now," Keitaro stammered out and headed for the stairs.

Flustered, Motoko walked toward him, intent on apologizing for Mitsune's vulgarity. As fortune had it, however, Keitaro tripped over the bokken which had been wielding during the fight and skated straight into Mitsune, knocking her down with him on top.

"I'm so sorry, Konno," he mumbled as raised himself up. "Are you okay... oh... umm... sorry?" he asked as it rapidly became apparent that the handhold he had raised himself up with was, in fact, Mitsune's right breast.

"Urashima," Motoko growled, her eye twitching and her face flushing with anger. "Zanganken!" she exclaimed as she brought her bokken around sent Keitaro flying though the air and off the roof.

Kitsune watched Keitaro go flying with a shocked expression but recovered as she got up and dusted herself off. "You didn't have to do that, you know. I hope you didn't kill him..."

* * *

Nostalgia is possibly the oddest emotion to feel while flying bodily through the air, but it is what Keitaro experienced as he sailed in a long, lazy arc over Hinata. _/I guess I miss the view from up here,/_ he thought to himself as the world whizzed past. His personal shield had saved him from most of the trauma of Motoko's blow, leaving him to enjoy the view before it came time to land.

"That did not end in a way I would have liked," he mused, as he had a few seconds to wonder what had gone wrong. He'd always been a klutz, but he'd been able to tame it as he grew older. Mostly. Right now, he seemed to be suffering from it full force, however.

"No help for it," he decided as he twisted in mid air with the ground fast approaching. "Mol Guri Suri Ma!" he chanted as he concentrated. The approach of the ground slowed but did not stop. Twisting again, he got his feet under him and ran with the landing, dissipating the force of his impact over several long strides instead of one dead impact. The only thing left to do was walk back. _/At least that didn't go as badly as it did the first time around,/_ he decided. _/Mostly, anyway./_

* * *

A/N: "Mol Guri Suri Ma" has no meaning, it's just some nonsense I worked up for Keitaro's key phrase. I was going to write about twice this much for this chapter, but I decided to go ahead and release it at this point since it's on par with previous chapters.


	4. Escalation

A/N: Chapter 3 got updated at the same time I posted this one. I fixed some language stuff and edited it to drop honorifics, which I'm doing for now. I haven't seen a non-translated version of the manga (my primary basis for "canon") and it's been long enough since I've seen the anime that I can't put –sans and –chans in the right places for the girls talking to each other. I can handle Keitaroanyone conversations, but the girls talking to each other is my difficulty (old friends generally don't follow the regular rules). I will stick with using last names in place of first names for more formalized relationships (ie, Motoko to Keitaro). I feel that this course of action is preferable to having it done badly, even though I don't love it this way and it looks a little weird sometimes.

The Rebound Effect: Again!  
Chapter 4: Escalation

Disclaimer: Characters and setting copyright Ken Akamatsu. Spoilers, those that might appear, would be from the end of the manga series (vol 14). Negima spoilers will be growing slowly. "How magic works" will be at whatever point I've seen to (currently a chapter in the high 50s). Plotline spoilers are currently not existent.

Again, thoughts are represented as /thought/ and spoken text is "text".

* * *

"Sempai!"

Keitaro turned as a young feminine voice called out his name. He had been walking slowly back to the Hinatasou through town when the cry, accompanied by the sound of running feet, broke him away from his thoughts. "Oh, Shinobu!' he called back, waving to her and smiling a little as she hurried to catch up with him.

The sun was sinking fully below the horizon and the scattered array of street lamps flared to life one by one all along the street. Motoko's blow had sent him sailing quite a distance, and the walk back had been time-consuming, made more so by his deep thoughts.

"Sempai, we were worried that Motoko might have... overreacted," she said as she caught up with him and tried to slow her breathing. "Everyone is out looking for you. We were afraid you might have been hurt."

Keitaro blinked at the show of concern and offered her a reassuring smile. "No, I'm fine. Aoyama caused me to end up on the other side of town, but I... ah... landed in something soft," he said, trying to cover up his miraculous lack of injury. _/I guess this isn't an everyday event for them. Yet, at least,/_ part of his mind added darkly.

Shinobu noticed that the sun had disappeared and an expression of worry came across her face. "We need to hurry back. Everyone was supposed to meet back at the base of the stairs at sundown to regroup. I didn't think I was going to find you before it was time to head back. I thought you were probably..." She didn't finish and he could tell that she had been worried about his health.

_/You've only known me for half a day, Shinobu, but you are still concerned for my wellbeing,/_ he thought as he placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Let's hurry up and get there to meet them, then. I don't want anyone to be troubled about me."

She nodded and smiled at him. The tension in her frame seemed to lessen and he felt relief for that. Upsetting Shinobu had always been one of the more terrible things he had done in his youth and one that he had regretted. As they walked, she fell into step with him, a little behind and on his right side. As they neared the base of the long and winding staircase up to the Hinatasou, he noticed that her nervousness was returning.

"Um... sempai?" she asked as they walked, and he had a feeling that he knew what she was about to ask. "Would it be alright... I mean, could you... Would you tutor me in math?" The last came out in a hurried jumble of words that took him a second or two to decipher.

"Certainly, Shinobu. It would be my honor to assist you," he said with a smile as the expected question came. She beamed back at him and the last of her tension vanished. She rushed ahead as they rounded the corner and spotted Mitsune and Naru waiting at the foot of the stairs. They both seemed a little surprised as Keitaro walked back to them, alive and well.

When Motoko came back from her own searching a short while later with Su in tow, she simply nodded to him, though he was sure she was just a little bit impressed at his resilience.

* * *

"The sutra Anurupye Sunyamanyat says: 'If one is in ratio, the other one is zero'. That means that x is going to be zero since y is in ratio with the constants. Then you just solve for y and it turns out to be," he tapped the numbers of the problem with the pencil while doing a simple bit of mental math. "That means y is going to be -4. See?"

Shinobu nodded hesitantly. "Y-yeah, I see... I've never heard of using sutras to solve problems before."

He laughed nervously, trying to remember where he'd learned that particular bit of information and whether or not it was prevalent in the twentieth century. "Yeah, just a little trick I picked up, I guess. But you just have to remember that everything is easy once you've learned how to do it. So just concentrate on each thing as you come to it and when you've mastered it, it will be another tool you can use later to solve harder problems."

Shinobu looked the problem over again and nodded to herself. She yawned widely and glanced at the clock as she did so. "Oh, I didn't realize it was already midnight," she said, more than a little embarrassed. "Thank you for your help, sempai, I did not mean to keep you up."

He offered her a polite smile and stifled a yawn of his own. "No problem, Shinobu. Consider it my thank-you for the cookies you brought."

She blushed and nodded before gathering up her things to head for bed. In the back of his mind, Keitaro idly noted that no one had burst in on them while he tried his hand at tutoring. The first time he had stayed at the Hinatasou, he'd had an escort for a lot of activities, particularly early on. The only one who seemed to hold any opinion about his potential danger to members of the opposite sex was Motoko, and she had been oddly contrite after he had returned from her abrupt flying lesson.

"Good night, sempai," Shinobu offered sweetly as she opened the door and stepped out, almost straight into Naru, who had been reaching to open the door. Naru's quick reflexes saved the tray she was carrying from falling and the two exchanged a quiet word before Shinobu walked past and down the hallway.

Still seated at the table, Keitaro didn't catch what was said, but he called a "good night" after Shinobu as she departed. Naru walked in and placed the tray on the table. Keitaro blinked in surprise at the action. _/What's she doing?/_ he wondered as he watched her turn to close the door. He noticed the three cups on the tray and surmised that she had intended to bring tea to the study party.

She took a seat opposite to him at the table and placed her hands flat on its surface. She leaned forward, looked him squarely in the eye, and said in a very flat tone, "I know."

His mind raced as he tried to decide what it was, exactly, that she knew. Had she discovered evidence of his magical work earlier in the day? Did she know about his journey from the future? Was some foreign psyche embedded in her young body? His thoughts swirled and he finally reined them in enough to respond weakly. "You know?"

"Yes. I know that you're not a Toudai student," she answered in a very forceful voice, but he felt some relief at the declaration.

"Oh, yeah, that." He laughed lamely, trying to cover relief as he sought to dredge up old memories. "How did you... oh, yeah, that's right. We attend the same preparatory school, don't we? You're the girl that's top in the nation on the mock tests, aren't you?"

It was her turn to blink in surprise at his ability to recognize her out of her study outfit. "Yeah. That's me."

He nodded in satisfaction that he'd partially diffused whatever head of anger she might have been working up. "It's kind of funny... I was a little groggy after passing out and, for a while there, I forgot I hadn't gotten into Toudai yet. There hasn't been, you know, a good time to set it straight yet. What with Aoyama trying to kill me and all."

She poured the tea, though he could not be sure whether it was because she was thirsty or because she wanted a second to think. "Do you think they will let you stay when they discover the truth?"

He detected a stronger than necessary emphasis on the word 'they' when she said it, and he began to feel that she was the first person he would have to make amends to. "I... I can only hope that an understanding can be reached. I never meant to deceive anyone. It's just that I really need a place to stay. This year, I am certain to get into Toudai." The certainty in his voice was so strong that she nodded along as he said it. _/Of course I can get into Toudai... it should be simple enough at this point,/_ he mused.

"You seem determined to do so," she said, looking into her own tea, "and Shinobu seemed happy that you were helping her out. I think you might be able to convince them to let you stay."

He nodded, wondering again who, exactly, she was referring to. For a long minute, he watched her across his own cup of tea, studying her and comparing her to the glowing memory of his first wife. This Naru was very young in comparison to his memory, but the same beauty was there. She certainly had the same personality.

"I... thank you for being so quiet about this. I really am sorry," he said, bowing his head slightly in shame. _/I really didn't mean for it all to happen the same way it did the first time./_

The moment was broken as Mitsune slid the door to the room open and cleared her throat noisily. "My, what a homey scene," she said coyly. "I didn't know you were interested in him as well." She laughed lightly as Naru rose and glared at her. "Keitaro, you might not realize it, but having tea alone with a man in his room is pretty close to a proposal from our little Naru."

"Kitsune," Naru growled.

"Oh, I'm just teasing. Calm down," she said with another laugh and a teasing smile.

"Umm... Mitsune, do you want to join us or something?" Keitaro offered in a vain attempt to calm down the situation again.

"Oh, no, I just stopped in to tell you that you've got a visitor, Mr. Toudai. She's down in the living room. You've got weird friends," she said as she ducked out of the opening and down the hall to avoid the glares Naru was sending her way.

* * *

Naru tagged along behind Keitaro as he made his way down the stairs to the living area. _/Who gets visitors at this time of night?/_ she wondered. _/And what's he doing having visitors at a time like this? He should be worrying about getting kicked out for lying to us./_

She kept her concerns to herself as she came down the stairs behind him. The person waiting in the living area was about as far from what she could have expected as possible. A large heavy-looking trunk had been rolled into the room, and a small backpack rested on top of it. The visitor herself was a small girl, not even as old as Shinobu, seated on the couch.

The girl saw Keitaro and babbled something in what sounded like Cantonese as she got up and advanced on him. He responded in the same language and raised his hands defensively. The girl lunged forward, but instead of attacking him, she hugged him.

"Umm... Keitaro?" Naru asked, not quite sure what to make of this.

"Oh, ah..." Keitaro said, trying to pull the girl off of him long enough to introduce her. Finally, she released him enough that he could talk though he was blushing furiously. "This is Kagurazaka Asuna, she is... umm..."

"I'm his wife," the girl said with a hard smile and bowed. Keitaro looked at her, shocked as she said it, and the girl mumbled something in Chinese to him as she did so. The look on her face made Naru almost as interested in what they were saying in the other language as she was in why, exactly, Keitaro was married to a preteen.

* * *

A/N: Well, raise your hand if you saw that one coming? Didn't think so. Asuna is, fairly obviously, from Negima. I've never actually seen a Love Hina/Negima crossover that used main characters, so this will be fun (I've seen several with the thousand master involved, but the timeline makes things hard... as we're about to see).

Using the magna timeline. In the manga, Keitaro gets beaten up less violently in the start than in the anime. Whereas the anime sends Keitaro flying quite a lot, he doesn't actually go across town for quite a few chapters in the manga. Thus, the fact that Motoko sent him flying that far and he lived is a bigger deal than the anime might suggest. The other girls were also significantly less angry with him than they were in either anime or manga, which lead to them being more concerned.

The math trick. Yes, there is a real mathematical sutra thing. It's called Vedic Math (plug it into google if you want some specific info). Basically, it's a set of sutras which help you do some simple (and not so simple) stuff with mathematics. Personally, it doesn't look like it'd be too much help for most people, but Keitaro's from a future that is both more India-centric and mathematics oriented than our present so it's quite likely that he would know and use such tricks. If only because it would help him fit in. Right now, it's being pushed as a way to shave 10% of your time off of an engineering school entry exam. I imagine that Toudai test takers might go for it, as well.

Comments and criticism much appreciated. A huge heap of thanks goes out to those brave (or is it foolish?) souls who preread this for me.


End file.
